Ramadan Ramsey

by Louis Edwards

  But after he had stood in the fast-moving cab line—TAKSi, the signs on the vehicle rooftops read—and hopped into the yellow car idling at the curb, he accepted that he was not going home today. The welcoming backseat settled the matter. There was always another mode of transport waiting for you if you looked for it and followed the signs. His own legs. Miss Bea’s car. The first plane. Another plane. This cab. What was next? A boat? Who knew? Just keep going! No—he would not go home until he ran out of money or ideas, or until commanded to leave by a force stronger than himself.

  The cabbie was sweating—from the August heat, it seemed—and dabbing at his face with an already drenched blue towel when Ramadan slid across the backseat. Even the back of his head, scalp peeking through a closely cropped haircut, was glistening with moisture. As best Ramadan could tell, he was also irritated by the swelter and, without turning to look at his passenger, he asked gruffly, “Hotel?”

  “Hotel?” Ramadan said, stalling. Oh, yes, a hotel! he thought.

  “Hotel!” the man said again, impatience rising in his voice. He turned to Ramadan, his round, bearded face pleading for more than an answer to his question. His look softened. “You no man. You boy. American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you family?”

  “I don’t know. I mean . . .” Ramadan paused, figuring he would have to lie. But then, taking a leap of faith, he uttered the claim that had sustained many a sinner before him—“I . . . I am meeting my father later.”

  “Okay. Where you go now, son? Hotel?”

  “Okay, yes, hotel.” Ramadan heard Mama Joon’s voice in his head as clearly as he heard the cabbie’s now. Once, when they were walking together on Canal Street going to buy him some new sneakers, she had escorted him inside her workplace and showed him the vast, ornate public areas. It’s an old building, boy, but the hotel is young, almost the same age as you! While she went into a back office and visited her co-workers, she had left him alone in the lobby, and he bounced around from one cushy chair to the next. “Let’s stay here!” he said when she came back. She had laughed as they left to finish their shopping. Maybe one day. The name sure sounds just like what it is, doesn’t it? Then she said it—as he was about to—only with more conviction. Unsure if there was such a place in Istanbul, if his response would even make sense, he said, “The Ritz?”

  “Okay,” the cabbie responded, and he turned around and drove off.

  Ramadan pulled out his phone, thumbed it to life, and smiled at Mama Joon.

  It’s so easy!

  As the cab left the airport, he stared out the window, saying a goodbye to the place where he had touched down safely, here on the other side of the world. The whole experience felt intergalactic, and Ataturk International looked like a space station. Home base in a strange land. Then he heard the cab driver sigh and say, “Oh, Ramazan!”

  Pulled out of his alienation by what sounded like the calling of his name, he answered warily, “Yes?”

  “What?” the confused-looking cabbie, wiping his brow, asked. Their eyes met in the rearview mirror.

  “You said ‘Ramadan.’”

  “Yes.”

  “How—how did you know . . . ?”

  “Know what?” The cabbie moaned with mild frustration and looked back at the road. “My English . . . no good.”

  “I mean, you said—”

  “No . . . I say ‘Ramazan.’” The cabbie was speaking quickly, and Ramadan again heard his name.

  “Yes!”

  “No . . . I mean yes!” He moaned again. “I no think so good now.”

  Ramadan muttered under his breath, “You did say ‘Ramadan.’”

  “I hear what you say, Mister Boy.”

  “What is going on?” Ramadan asked rhetorically.

  But the cabbie answered, “Ramadan! You understand when I say in English? You know Ramadan?”

  “Do I know what?” Ramadan asked.

  “Oh!” the driver cried out, this time as if in actual physical pain. He threw his arms up, and the car swerved sharply to the right. In the backseat, Ramadan was tossed against the door to his left, and his backpack tumbled onto the floor, spilling some of its contents. The driver grasped the steering wheel with both hands and regained control of the vehicle, setting the cab back on a straight path.

  “So sorry,” he said, with sincerity. “Sorry, sorry . . .”

  They had moved along only a short distance more when the cabbie began sniffing the air, moving his head from side to side in short, jerky motions, and, with a marked note of distress, asked, “What is this smell?”

  Ramadan, picking up his backpack, noticed that the bag of leftover Popeyes had fallen out, and its aromas were beginning to pervade the cab. He held up the savory-smelling package, thrusting it forward so the driver could get a good whiff and understand that it was only food.

  “Fried chicken! You want some?”

  “Oh, no! You try to kill me, boy!”

  “No!” As Ramadan shoved the bag into his backpack, he read the nameplate on the back of the driver’s seat: EMIR ADEM. “No, Mr. Emir, I’m not trying to kill you.”

  “I no eat . . . I no eat . . . Ramadan, oh, Ramadan . . .”

  Ramadan was about to answer to his name again when—Mr. Emir . . . no eat . . . no eat . . . Ramadan!

  “Ah!” he said. “It is Ramadan!”

  “Yes!” the driver yelled back.

  “Mr. Emir!”

  “What, boy?”

  “Mr. Emir . . .” Ramadan patted his chest twice and, with a pride he had never quite experienced while stating his identity, said, “I am Ramadan!”

  “What?” Emir asked, clearly not understanding his young passenger and plainly in the throes of hypoglycemic agitation. “What you say, boy? Speak English!”

  “My name . . . my name is Ramadan!”

  “What? Your name Ramadan?” Emir shook his head. “I no eat. I no think good. Am I dream?”

  “No—you no dream,” Ramadan said, mimicking Emir’s grammar and his accent.

  Emir side-eyed Ramadan, as if sensing insult. Then he smiled. “You Muslim?”

  “No.”

  “Christian.”

  Ramadan was unsure of how to answer. “I . . . I used to be,” he said, hoping to end a conversation he wasn’t prepared to have.

  “Used to be? What are you now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, Mr. Ramadan, with Jesus around your neck, when you find out, tell me!”

  Ramadan grabbed his crucifix and tucked it inside his T-shirt. “Okay.”

  “American boy name Ramadan—the world is change,” Emir said with resignation. “The world is change.” He wiped his brow again. “I tell my wife, Yonca, when I go home. Oof—if I no die before dinner.”

  As the car sped toward the center of Istanbul, Emir adjusted the airconditioning and rolled up the windows. After a few minutes he said, “Ramadan . . .”

  Preoccupied with looking out at the city and used to Emir calling out his name but meaning something else, Ramadan didn’t respond.

  “Ramadan!” Emir repeated.

  “Oh, me?”

  “Yes, you. Where is your luggage? You have just this fried chicken bag?”

  “Oh—I forgot it in the airport. But I don’t need it.”

  “Your father, he is bring you more things?”

  “I hope. One day.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Uh . . . no, sir,” Ramadan answered, enjoying being honest, however vaguely.

  Emir shook his head, giving Ramadan the impression he might turn the cab around and head back to the airport. Instead, he asked, “You have reservation at hotel?”

  “No, sir.”

  Emir peered at Ramadan in the rearview mirror. “How you pay, boy?”

  Ramadan removed a wad of bills and his American Express card from his pocket and showed them to Emir, who said, reading the card, “Ramadan . . .”

  “Ramsey,” Ramadan said.

&
nbsp; Then Emir shrugged, handed him back the card, and said, “Okay.”

  A couple of minutes later, Emir said, practically singing, “Ramadaaaan . . .”

  This time Ramadan met the cabbie’s stare in the mirror. “Yes, sir?”

  “How long you stay here, boy, with no reservation, no clothes, and with father who come maybe tomorrow, maybe never?”

  Looking out the window in search of an answer, Ramadan said, “I’ve been wondering about that myself.” The modern buildings of downtown Istanbul reminded him of downtown New Orleans and downtown Houston. The little boy in him, the fantasizer who had brought him all the way to this distant land, asked: If Istanbul is just another city, why can’t I just stay forever? But the little man in him, the one who was noticing how everything was actually different here, even things that seemed the same—the Popeyes chicken, for instance, hadn’t really tasted the way it tasted in America at all—secretly wanted to find his way back home and conquer his own corner of the world. Through the two visions, he saw mosques doming out of the landscape, thrusting up as organically as mushrooms, minarets sprouting like blades of grass. He felt the naturalness of everything—however the same, however different—sweeping him forward, wising him up. His probing, maturity-inducing gaze rewarded him with the inkling of an idea. It had something to do with the convergence of two things: the auspicious timing of his arrival in this new place and the arrival of a new him.

  “Mr. Emir, when does Ramadan end?”

  “Saturday is the last day. Only five more days.” Then he added with a grimace, followed by a laugh, “Allah, give me strength!”

  Five days. Maybe that was how long before he would be ready to go home. Maybe. He laughed along with Emir. Then he closed his eyes and heard himself asking Allah, or any god who was listening, really, to bestow upon him the same blessing Emir had just requested.

  * * *

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the Ritz, Emir honked at the burly security guard posted in the driveway kiosk, and the man waved them through. He drove past the entrance and parked at the curb. Ramadan watched him lean forward and grip the steering wheel, his head bowed, as if in prayer. “Are you okay, Mr. Emir?”

  Emir turned and said, “I ask you the same, Mr. Ramadan. Are you okay?”

  Ramadan looked at the glass doors leading to the hotel lobby and the uniformed bellmen standing there. “I . . . think so.”

  “You think so?” Emir cocked his head to the side. “I think I need to help you.”

  “But why?”

  “I have son like you. Young like you. Mehmet. He like to go places with no tell me. He think I no know. But I know. He go everywhere, all over town. Sometime with friends. Alone, sometime too. Just like you come here to Istanbul. But he good boy. You good boy? Yes, yes, I see you good boy. Not like Ahmet, my big boy. No, he is a man now. Is hard to be a good boy when you is a man. Ahmet want to go away. To the war. I don’t know why. He need to stay in school. Finish study to be something. I worry. He watch the war on the TV, on the computer, and he think it is just a movie, like the silly ha-ha movies he study at the university. He see this, and he want to go. For what? ‘To see, Baba! To see! To see is to live, Baba!’ What this mean? I no know. But I tell you I think he go. That is Ahmet. I no know how to stop him. He fight me! He and me, we be at war all the time, like enemy. And so—he no good boy.

  “But Mehmet, he good boy like you. Once upon a time . . . Mehmet take the train all the way to Ankara. Alone. And now he tell me and Yonca he want to go to America. He and his friends, they like the American music. He like the American basketball. He love these things! He go to America one day, he say. I believe he go, too. Just like Ahmet go soon. Why they like to go so much? I think maybe because they see me move, move, move in my taxi, every day, every day, and they want to move, too. But I no go nowhere. I am still here. Ahmet want to go to Suriye! And he will go, too. I no can stop him.”

  Ramadan had been staring down at the floor of the cab, shying away from making eye contact with Emir. But at the mention of Ahmet’s destination, which could have only one translation, he looked up.

  “And Mehmet will go to America. That is my Mehmet. So you see, Ramadan?”

  “See what?”

  “Why I help you. If once upon a time, my Mehmet so stupid—like you—to be alone in a strange place, to be maybe in America—with no me, no Baba—I want someone help him. Like I help you. Now you see?”

  “I see.”

  “And—it is Ramadan, Ramadan! I do good for you, Allah do good for me!”

  Energized by his own generous spirit, Emir got out and sprinted around the car. “Come, come, come,” he said, opening the door for Ramadan and grabbing his backpack.

  “Thank you, Mr. Emir,” Ramadan said, sliding out of the cab.

  As they walked through the hotel entrance, they greeted the bellmen, and Emir put his arm around Ramadan’s shoulder. When they had almost reached the check-in desk, Emir whispered, “I talk. I talk for you.”

  A young man behind the counter, Ozgur according to his name tag, greeted them, and Ramadan listened as Emir spoke casually in Turkish, his hands gesturing as if he were directing his own performance. Ozgur nodded, occasionally smiling at Ramadan. When Emir stopped talking, Ozgur said in flawless English, “So, young man, you will be staying with us for a few days while you await your father’s arrival? Your identification and the credit card, please.” And he began typing at his terminal.

  Ramadan was so busy trying to process what Ozgur had just said that he didn’t even realize there was no need for translation. Flustered by the clarity, he didn’t respond until Emir touched his shoulder, prompting him to dig out his passport and American Express card. Ozgur looked these over, and continued checking him in.

  “You are in luck, Mr. Ramsey. I have found something special for you.”

  As he completed the registration, he suggested Ramadan exchange some of his U.S. currency, which he had exposed during the search for his passport, into Turkish lira. Ramadan looked at Emir, who said, “Okay.”

  A few minutes later, they headed up to the tenth floor of the hotel. As they exited the elevator and approached room 1010, Emir said, “Ozgur say ‘special.’ We look with our own eye.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Maybe. We see.”

  Emir’s skepticism vanished the second they opened the door.

  “Now I believe,” he said.

  Straight ahead, a series of wide floor-to-ceiling windows spanning nearly the entire back wall of the room, adorned with rust-colored silk drapes, revealed a majestic vista of Istanbul. Ramadan rushed into the room and pressed his hands and his face against the middle pane.

  “Bosphorus,” Emir said.

  “Yes! We are in Europe and over there—that is Asia!”

  Ramadan was mesmerized by the scene: a soccer stadium in the foreground to the left; a simple but gleaming mosque to the right, surrounded by patches of greenery; beyond that, a variety of ships—freighters, tugboats, cruise ships—streaming through the waterway. Farther out still, on the other side of the Bosphorus, a hilly landscape filled with what looked like village after village—houses, huts, churches, more mosques, fortresses even, for all he knew.

  “Asia,” he had said. But what he was really seeing was the entire map, which he knew well. The other side of world. All the way to the southeastern border of Turkey, all the way to Syria, to Aleppo.

  “You like?” Emir asked.

  Ramadan turned and said, “Yeah!”

  Emir placed the backpack on the king-size bed and said, “Okay. I go now.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Ramadan went to Emir. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, Mr. Emir!”

  “Keep your money. You need new clothes for what you leave at the airport. Tomorrow I bring Mehmet. He good boy. He bring you shop. He show you Istanbul!”

  Emir gestured out the window at the panorama of the city. Ramadan looked at it, and th
en back at Emir. “Okay.”

  Emir rushed out, saying, “I go home to dinner now.” He pointed to the backpack. “Eat you chicken, Ramadan. Eat you chicken!”

  A short time later, sitting at a small polished cherrywood desk, watching the light change on Istanbul’s glittering strait, Ramadan did as Emir had commanded. When he finished eating, fatigue descended with the inevitability of, somewhere out of view, the sinking of the sun, and he succumbed to the rigors of his many hours of travel. It took all the energy left in him to rise from the chair and fling himself onto the bed. Sleep happened so fast he didn’t even hear himself mumbling his own congratulatory words into the satiny duvet cover. “I did it . . . I did it . . . I did it . . .”

  His breath circled back to him, wafting up his nostrils, and the vapors from his meal insinuated themselves into his unconsciousness, confusing his senses. He dreamed he could see the outside sounds that were bleeding into his room. The boats’ horns blaring in from the Bosphorus took on the shapes of tubas, trumpets, and trombones. Later, the calls to prayer seemed to undulate to him from the minarets he’d seen out of his window, like sirens of blue ribbons. Near dawn, when a stubborn flake of cayenne-flavored crust dislodged itself from between his two front teeth and finally dissolved in his mouth, he dreamed he could taste, on the tip of his tongue, tomorrow.

  12

  The Magic of Istanbul

  Ramadan awoke the next morning to the muffled sound of a text pinging his cell phone. He had slept on top of the bed covers, fully clothed, so he pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and read a one-word message from Clarissa: Mustafa.